A free training for fiction writers (and the editors who love them) on the dialogue rules readers expect you to get right—so your punctuation disappears and your story stays immersive.
In this 60-minute webinar, two professional editors, Jeanette Smith and Katie Chambers, break down exactly how to punctuate dialogue in American English (Chicago style)—with examples, tricky edge cases, and a practice download so you can actually apply it.
This training doesn’t stop at the basics. We cover the moments that actually trip writers up from the basics to advanced dialogue punctuation strategies.
Why This Matters
Dialogue punctuation is the one place you don’t want to “get creative.”
Yes, fiction gives you room to play with style.
But dialogue punctuation has real rules that readers expect even if they can’t explain it.
When dialogue punctuation is off, readers don’t think, Ah, an error.
They think, Wait … what?
And that tiny hiccup can yank them right out of your story.
This training helps you eliminate those hiccups, so your dialogue reads clean, natural, and professional.
What You’ll Learn
You’ll learn how to punctuate
- Dialogue alone (and where punctuation goes in relation to quotation marks)
- Dialogue with speaker tags (he said / she asked)
- Dialogue with action beats
- Trailing off and interrupted dialogue
- Quotes within quotes
- Dialogue that continues over multiple paragraphs
- Non-dialogue in quotation marks (the weird “her body screamed ‘no’” category)
- Stutters and broken speech (hyphens, dashes, and what Chicago allows)
- Spoken punctuation
What You’ll Get
- Instant access to the full webinar recording
- Practice exercise and answer key
- “Strengthen Your Dialogue” and “Refine Tags & Beats” chapters from Katie’s Self-Editing Essentials book (These will help you with the craft side of dialogue, while the webinar helped with mechanics.
- Preparing for an Editor Toolkit)
- The opportunity to ask a professional editor your most pressing question, and get a personalized response
When you register, you’ll receive the webinar immediately then will get three follow-up emails with resources and expert guidance.
Grab the free training, download the practice files, and get dialogue punctuation off your mental load for good.
Join the authors who have mastered dialogue punctuation.
Register
Sign up now and take the first confident step toward fixing your dialogue.